The Coronavirus: Must We Lose, Give Up on It, or Fail the Marshmallow Test?

United States response to the COVID-19 pandemic is now solidly in a new phase.  We’re past the time when mandated closings dictated what we could or could not do, and are moving on into “reopening.”  With that, there has been a flurry of views suggesting we, collectively, are not doing so well. 

When Paul Krugman said “America Fails the Marshmallow Test” in the June 9^th New York Times, he referred to “a famous psychological experiment that tests children’s willingness to delay gratification” by offering them one marshmallow now or two in 15 minutes.  While “other advanced countries, even hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain” now have sharply reduced new infection rates, “it now looks likely that by late summer we’ll be the only major wealthy nation where large numbers of people are still dying” from the virus.  He named South Korea, one of the most prosperous and densely packed countries in the world, and New Zealand, elsewhere in the news for now having zero cases, as achieving great success by not only getting the most from social distancing but by implementing “a regime of testing, tracing and isolating, quickly identifying any new outbreak, finding everyone exposed and quarantining them until the danger is past.”  He blamed us being “too disunited, with too many people in the grip of ideology and partisanship.”  Americans, judge thyselves.

Avoiding the latter, columnist Ross Douthat, in the June 7^th edition of that same publication, came out with “Why the Coronavirus Is Winning.”  He quoted a computer science doctoral student (of all people) reminding us that all the organism “wants is targets,” is totally unaware of and unresponsive to “the elaborate social nuances humans have carved out through patterns of communication, representation and discourse,” and in the process “has exposed how much of Western society… is permeated with influential people who have deluded themselves into thinking that their ability to manipulate words, images and sounds gives them the ability to control reality itself.”  Douthat tracked resistance to avoiding coronavirus exposure as starting from Republicans, “who embraced the idea that economic carnage was just the result of misguided government policy,” despite crashing demand being roughly concurrent with legal restrictions, and, after George Floyd’s death, moving “to the public health establishment, many of whose leaders are tying themselves in ideological knots arguing that it is not only acceptable but essential, after months circumscribing every sort of basic liberty, to encourage mass gatherings to support one particular just cause.”  With those most responsible for objective public policy now infected, so to speak, Douthat proclaimed that “there will be no further comprehensive attempt to fight the virus.”  At the least, we must prepare for that possibility.

Observing the same variable standard began “America is Giving Up on the Pandemic,” by Alexis C. Madrigal and Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic on June 7^th.  They say “Americans may wish the virus to be gone, but it is not,” as, outside the Northeast, “cases have only plateaued,” and “there’s no point in denying the obvious:  Standing in a crowd for long periods raises the risk of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” with head epidemiologist Anthony Fauci calling these protests and subsequent police actions “a perfect set-up” for virus proliferation.  As well, United States residents “never stayed at home to the degree that most Europeans have.”  Overall, per Madrigal and Meyer, “the problems with our response to the pandemic reflect the problems of the country itself” – I add that they also illuminate cultural differences, specifically our higher independence and risk-taking, the same things that assure that our life expectancy will not match the likes of those in Japan or Norway.

Overall, our chance of getting or giving the coronavirus is now, more than ever, a function of our individual choices.  A great-seeming article idea, which precipitated “When 511 Epidemiologists Expect to Fly, Hug and Do 18 Other Everyday Activities Again” by Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui in the June 8^th New York Times, was neutralized by respondents’ overriding view that it would depend on availability of “an effective vaccine or treatment,” but still provided worthwhile information.  Activities least likely for quick epidemiologist resumption were “sporting events, concerts and plays,” with most expecting to pass them up for more than a year.  “Weddings and funerals,” “airplanes,” and “visiting the elderly” were the most mixed and controversial.  But our own preferences and situations must dictate.  For me, I expect to fly within the year, but think my Chewbacca hairstyle is a small price to pay for avoiding close contact with someone who has had that with many others.  Group protest marches are out, but I can walk for exercise without a mask all I want, as here I rarely get within 20 feet of other pedestrians let alone 6.  As carryout is fine, I don’t want to eat at even a virus-modified restaurant.  You need to think about your own choices, as this thing isn’t ending soon and the law won’t protect you anymore.  Just don’t catch yourself settling for one marshmallow now instead of two soon, as the answer to the title question is “no.”

Totally Unexpected May Jobs Report Leaves Unemployment Lower and Jobs Added – AJSN Shows Latent Demand at 32.1 Million, Another Improvement

When the paragraph introducing this morning’s Employment Situation Summary popped up at its usual 8:30 on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site, I thought I was reading the wrong thing.  Here we were, expecting something like the published projections of 7 million more jobs gone and 19.8% unemployment, and both actually improved.

Per the document, we gained 2.5 million net new nonfarm positions, compared with April’s 20.5 million loss, and seasonally adjusted joblessness is down 1.4% to 13.3%.  Most other numbers followed the modest but significant improvement, with the labor force participation rate up 0.6% to 60.8% and the employment-population ratio rising 1.5% to 52.8%.  The count of people working part-time for economic reasons, or holding on to less than full-time work while seeking that, shed 300,000 to 10.6 million, and average private payroll nonfarm hourly wages fell 26 cents, no doubt due to more low-paying jobs being actually or allegedly reinstated, to $29.75.  The number of those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, almost irrelevant to the current situation, gained almost 300,000 to return to March’s 1.2 million.  Unadjusted joblessness matched the adjusted version by losing 1.4% and came in at 13.0%.

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many currently unavailable positions could be quickly filled if all knew they were out there, lost 2.2 million from April’s all-time record, as follows:

All but 400,000 of this upturn is from lower official unemployment, with almost all the rest from fewer people wanting to work but not looking for it for a year or more.  Compared with May 2019, the AJSN has gained 16.5 million, most from huge increases in these same two categories.

What happened?  The notes with the BLS numbers gave several possible reasons:  replacement of surveying at their regional data collection centers with more phone use, a 67% household survey response rate down from about 82% before coronavirus’s effect, and a possibility of confusion from workers still technically employed but “absent from their jobs” along with classification mistakes on people with other gray-area work statuses.  It seems certain that if complete lack of pay would make workers on payrolls officially unemployed, the rate would be far higher, and might indeed be roughly 20%.  As a result, “BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address this issue.”  We can only hope this is not a political scandal.

Accordingly, this data is not only obsolete, as was the case for the last two versions, but severely in error.  There is a good chance the BLS will issue a correction or at least a corrective estimate, and reopenings may have made 13.3% a reasonable estimate for today, but in the meantime, the turtle went backward, not forward.

Around the Coronavirus Horn, Murkily

We’re going through odds and ends this week.  Here we are, with interpretations to favor the pro-Trump and anti-Trump sides.  I’m not calling them Democratic or Republican since the real values of both parties are in flux, and certainly not liberal or conservative since our president is not a conservative:

First, in response to Mike Bebernes in the May 26^th Yahoo News, “Is the $600 unemployment bonus helping or hurting?,” the rough answer is clear:  It’s helping.  It may be too high in many cases, but as I have written more there is nothing more economically stimulative than jobless pay, as it goes to people very likely to spend it.  As for any idea that they should be encouraged to work by being denied it, that’s straight out of A Christmas Carol, when almost all of the currently readily available jobs for which those who lost low-end ones are qualified potentially expose them to Covid-19.  We are the farthest we have been in many decades from consistent workplace safety – where is OSHA these days? – and nobody should be required to make that choice.

Second, there is nothing wrong with a president’s son crowing about a big stock market gain on the same day our cumulative virus deaths reached 100,000.  Many other things happened then, and we should be complimenting ourselves for doing social distancing so well that this total, as many people in early March openly feared, was not in the millions.  I don’t want to be reminded of the “AIDS quilt” made with a square for everyone who had ever died from that, when a similar “cancer quilt” might have been the size of Rhode Island.  There is also nothing immoral about businesses choosing to reopen – or to stay closed.

Third, “World economic prospects darken, rebound delayed:  Reuters poll” (Shrutee Sarkar, Reuters, May 26^th) seems behind the curve – but were many people really expecting a fast recovery?  Jobs have gone away not only from pandemic precautions, but from the loss of unemployed people as customers.  Reuters-poll projected 2020 world economy shrinkages have gone from 1.2% on April 3^rd to 2.0% on April 26^th and this week 3.2%.  The last one still seems low to me; despite the number of deaths being lower than expected, I expect it will be about 5%.  Rapid normalization is not promising, as it was also announced this week that Sweden, of the “herd immunity” strategy, now tops the planet’s nations in per-capita fatalities. 

Fourth, I don’t think our current situation will kill off ride providing or room sharing, but it is giving de facto hotel and taxi businesses another severe blow, as shown in “California Sues Uber and Lyft, Claiming Workers are Misclassified,” by Kate Conger in the May 5^th New York Times.  As before, once these two and Airbnb are legally obligated to the same rules as their established equivalents, including being unable to call obvious employees “contractors” with few rights, they will almost go away.  There will be niches in which they can survive, but eventually common sense in regulation will cut them vastly back.

Fifth, how about those maps showing total coronavirus cases by state giving us per-capita instead?  That would help when, as should be happening soon, we get good data on month-before decisions to reopen.  Ten days after them, as in “Georgia Went First.  And It Screwed Up,” by Keren Landman in the April 30^th New York Times, is too soon for assessment, but in the next few weeks, we will know a lot, and it would be good to see that graphically and clearly.

Sixth, in a few eventful months the Times Editorial Board has gone from cellular phone surveillance being a huge national threat, worthy of a whole special section, to the devices being “particularly useful at this moment, when it’s crucial to know where infected people have been, and whom they’ve been close to.”  The same source, May 1^st’s “We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus,” even seemed to laud “several countries around the world, as well as some American states,” for starting “apps that either encourage or require their citizens to check in regularly and report their locations.”  Whew!  These problems could challenge master philosophers, so how will we common folk resolve them?  And some wonder why democracy has so often been called a great experiment. 

Seventh, is it truly necessary that spectator sports resume this year?

Eighth, if the Democrats think they are on a path to win back the White House this fall, they are mistaken – sportsbook.com, an offshore casino where it is legal to bet on elections, has Trump as a 5 to 4 favorite.

Keep safe – next week we’ll see just how bad American unemployment has officially become. 

Coronavirus This Week: Where We Are Now, Going, and Not Going

We have had a lot of recent news about reopening pieces of American life.  Per last week’s post, we have shifted from waiting for a vaccine, which could take anywhere from several months to several years, to relying on the social distancing we have learned and generally done well with to keep us safe in additional situations.

Per the May 19^th New York Times, “All 50 States Have Eased Coronavirus Restrictions.” Places like Connecticut and Pennsylvania, previously with bans on people leaving their homes for anything nonessential, are in the process of lifting those and at least matching policies here in New York state, where, for example, general driving has been allowed.  On the other side, Alaska is, effective today, returning to total pre-virus openness. 

The important thing to realize here is that freedom to conduct business does not mean the economy returning to February’s levels.  Between people broke from losing their jobs, those pulling back financially in preparation for possible problems, and those of us not wanting to risk our health for things as small as haircuts, most in-person businesses can expect only about 25% of their previous sales.  Confidence, through drastic reductions (not just leveling off) of new-infection rates, will we hope improve with time, but no legislation, short of spending not only trillions but tens of trillions of dollars on personal subsidies instead of large-corporation bailouts (with the low cost of money, large firms should be borrowing instead), will turn the clock back.  With intense politicization of the pandemic and poor federal guidance, people will be trusting their own judgment, which, with stores in small Idaho towns generally less crowded and therefore safer than those in Philadelphia or Cleveland, is appropriate.

One area getting especially large press has been what colleges will do in the fall.  Previously I wrote on a piece remarkably reckless for an Ivy League president, and an unstated rebuttal, “Colleges Are Deluding Themselves,” came out in the May Atlantic.  Its author Michael J. Sorrell, president of tiny Paul Quinn College, made all of the right points:  the background that “American higher education was in crisis long before the coronavirus”; the need for, and Sorrell’s experience at, universities adapting forcefully to changing times; a research discovery that “physical classes alone put almost all students on campus in close proximity to one another,” with “replacing the largest lecture courses with online classes… not enough to reduce the risk”; and clear statements that “if a school’s cost-benefit analysis leads to a conclusion that included the term acceptable number of casualties (italics his), it is time for a new model” and “for college students… sacrifices will include long periods of remote learning.”  I think  efforts to have normal campus life this fall are doomed to tragic, spectacular failure, and, as I wrote before, we have more critical national problems than requiring that people mostly around age 20 choose between taking a gap year or making do with online courses.

Elsewhere, we may need to “Hunker down:  Some states say no full-scale reopening until coronavirus vaccine, treatment is ready” (Tyler Olson, Fox News, May 19^th).  As reasonable as Alaska’s choice in context are statements from governors and mayors of New Jersey, Michigan, Los Angeles, Illinois, and Oklahoma City, that for example, per New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, “until either a proven vaccine is in our midst or proven therapeutics are widely available, we cannot firmly enter the new normal, which eventually awaits us when life will once again return to all of our workplaces, downtowns and main streets… and if we begin to see a backslide in public health, we will have to also pull back on the reins of our restart.”  And per “What to Expect When a Coronavirus Vaccine Finally Arrives,” in the May 20^th New York Times, it may take a while.  The polio virus was stopped by the 1950s Salk and Sabin vaccines after, of three similar attempts, “two proved ineffective, another deadly,” and the Salk vaccine itself had “flawed batches” which “caused more than 200 polio cases and 11 deaths.”  

So, let’s cheer the work being done here, but not hold our breaths.  Likewise, we’ll hope the reopenings, which seem generally sober and measured, work without a second Covid-19 explosion.  But we will need to be patient.  As the new saying goes, six feet apart is better than six feet under.

American Coronavirus Response Takes Shape, Now and in Cities in the Future

What is America’s true pandemic status?  Senators reflected major issues in questions they asked national disease expert of sorts Anthony S. Fauci on May 12th, put forth in Amber Phillips’ “The 5-Minute Fix” in that day’s Washington Post.  If places resume activity “too early,” per Fauci, “there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control, which in fact paradoxically will set you back not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery.”  We don’t know when a vaccine could be ready, “but development is moving extraordinarily quickly,” and those now in early testing could prove successful “by late fall or early winter,” which, per Phillips, is “super fast.”  (However, many others say it could be years away – see, for example, Stuart A. Thompson’s April 30^th New York Times “How Long Will a Vaccine Really Take?”.)  We can expect that “40 to 50 million tests a month” will be performed by September.  Unlike in many other countries, the rate of infections in the United States is not clearly declining, and the current tally of deaths, about 85,000, is more likely to be an undercount than an overcount.  “Evidence stacking up” says people do get immune from the virus once they have had it, though maybe not permanently, and, when asked if it will ever be “completely eradicated,” Fauci said, flatly, “no.” 

All of the above points to what business folks would call a paradigm shift, from waiting for a vaccine, giving it to everyone, and then fully reopening and resuming everything, to gradually allowing more people to be closer in public, the rate varying greatly with the activity, the setting, and the location.  It may now be perfectly fine for a wider range of businesses to come back now in the likes of Montana, if people wear masks and stay six feet apart, but Madison Square Garden rock concerts may wait for 2022 or later.  There will be plenty of legal and personal disagreements, but those are healthy, and despite some recurrences being inevitable we will generally progress as we grope into the future.

But what is that future?  Three pieces in recent weeks give us ideas.  The most recent and largest, “The Cities We Need” from the New York Times Editorial Board on May 11^th, gets its worth from documenting a left-wing wish list rather than being constructive.  Harsh, perhaps, but I wish such Times articles could stay away from complaining about inequality (a natural American cultural outcome), result and anecdote-driven accusations of racism, and the delusion that we will want, after this harrowing experience, to unite against climate change, and deal with problems in a reasonably bipartisan manner.  This editorial, which printed out to 19 pages, boiled down to almost nothing. 

The second, Uri Friedman’s “I Have Seen the Future – And It’s Not the Life We Knew” on May 1^st in The Atlantic, shows how that publication, despite being historically at least as liberal as the Times, can set aside any platform and get to the true issues.  Here, Friedman showed how in China’s city Wuhan, where the coronavirus started and has since mostly departed, and elsewhere such as in Denmark where new case numbers are now very low, “life returns in dribs and drabs, and the new normal is not the old normal.”  People in these places are still wearing masks and frequently washing their hands, and where schools are open, students cannot touch each other.  The real point here is that we should not wait for everything to come back as before but adjust to the new limitations while doing what we can.

Better still was Derek Thompson’s April 27^th “The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever,” also in The Atlantic.  Forever is a long time, but until the vaccine is distributed, the changes Thompson showed here have excellent chances of taking hold.  One will affect our most densely populated cities, particularly New York, as restaurants and other businesses must become less crowded and will therefore generate less revenue, resulting in current rents being far from affordable, meaning they, along with the values of storefront real estate, will crash.  Another is not a change, but “the big acceleration” of “preexisting trends,” such as fewer shopping malls, the obsolescence of department stores, and “the big-business takeover of the economy” as, realistic levels of government assistance or not, “one survey… found that just 30 percent of them expect to survive a lockdown that lasts four months.”  It is companies like “Amazon, Walmart, Dollar General, Costco, and Home Depot” that have the cash and the structure to outlast competitors, making the pandemic “a toxin for underdogs and a steroid for many giants.”  With fewer distinctive businesses and immigration halted, Tennessee Williams’s attribution that, except for New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans, all other American cities were the same will become more apt than ever.  Restaurants themselves may become less significant, and many, even on the high end, will stay takeout-only.  There will be more and more deliveries of almost everything.  As a result of advantages of living in them going away, people may leave cities in large numbers, resulting in, strangely, currently hopelessly gentrified places like Greenwich Village going back to their bohemian roots. 

Will these things materialize?  If a vaccine is indeed pervasive within a year, many will not.  Otherwise, we may indeed be starting a new chapter of American life.  Be prepared for it. 

Expected Disastrous Jobs Report, Current April 12th, Has 14.7% Unemployment and 20.5 Million Fewer Jobs: 34.3 Million AJSN Showing Latent Demand Highest Ever

This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary should surprise no one, with the only suspense the exact length of the drop.  We’re worse now, which is 26 days after the final survey date used here, but it still documents the first part of the American coronavirus economic plunge.

As of April 12^th, we had lost 20.5 million nonfarm payroll positions, with adjusted joblessness 14.7% (unadjusted 14.4%).  There were 23.1 million unemployed Americans, up 16.0 million from mid-March.  The unaffected count of those out for 27 weeks or longer improved, losing over 200,000 to 939,000, and average private nonfarm earnings, warped by the loss of massive numbers of lower-paying jobs, gained $1.39 to $30.01.  From there, though, everything was bad.  There were 10.9 million people working part-time for economic reasons, or keeping shorter-hours positions while unsuccessfully seeking full-time ones, up 5.1 million.  The two measures showing best how common it is for Americans to be working or one step away from it, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, fell 2.5% to 60.2% and 8.7% to 51.3% – these figures are the lowest, respectively, since January 1973 and before January 1948. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN reached an all-time peak by gaining 16.9 million, as follows:

Over 80% of this increase is from higher official unemployment.  A similar share of the rest came from people wanting work but not looking for it for a year or more, with the number of people reporting this status more than doubling from 3.3 million.  The number of those saying they were not interested in work rose 2.3 million, understandable for those in fields expected to employ few over at least the next several months.  The share of latent demand from those in the Unemployed category is now 59.1%, up from March’s 38.3%. 

Compared with a year ago, the AJSN is up 125%, with almost all of that from the two statuses contributing heaviest to April’s jump. 

Yes, this is terrible, and right now we are probably over 20% officially jobless.  As we level off, this data will better match the true release-date status, but for now only shows territory we have been through.  Be aware, though, that the above counts have no distortion from those not successfully filing for unemployment, as they are from personal and company surveys.  As for the turtle, someone picked him up and took him a long way back. 

Jobs and the Economy: Now and After the Pandemic, and Our Only Way Back

More views of where we are now, and where we will be when this thing eases, are coming forward. 

First, “America’s real coronavirus job losses could be worse than we thought.  Nearly 14 million people haven’t been able to apply for unemployment since the pandemic began” (Business Insider, April 28^th).  The title says most.  We are only speculating about current jobless numbers, yet it is sad that per economist Elise Gould we may have many millions more who can’t apply for benefits or for whatever reason have not tried yet, on top of 26 million already filing.  Per the Economic Policy Institute we can thus add 60% to those who have got through the systems, many of whom cannot pay for rent or food, requiring, per a university economist, “a stimulus well beyond what we’ve already seen.”  The May 8^th Bureau of Labor Statistics output, while hardly current, will be more accurate than the last one was on its release, and will tell us most of what we need to know.

Second, per the April 22^nd Fox Business, “Global CEOs see U-shaped recession due to coronavirus.”  That is what three-fifths of them expected as of mid-April, with others predicting “a double-dip recession,” with the chance that “some household names will not survive.”  That is worse than the V shape some once hoped for, but is better than the L-shape we may well see into 2021.

Something else is happening which we haven’t had for decades – a high need for more unions.  Per “’We can’t go back to the way things were before.’ Pandemic job actions offer hope for renewed labor movement,” by Nicholas Riccardi and Dee-Ann Durbin of the Associated Press in the April 28^th USA Today, the life-endangering nature of work not paying enough for that is causing de facto strikes.  Although, as Indeed economist Jed Kolko and the authors put it, “high unemployment and the end of a tight labor market create “the headwind for more worker power,” finding grocery and fast-food workers, among others, willing to risk their lives is proving harder, and health protection from employers has been spotty.  That recreates the situation we had in the likes of steelmaking and construction positions before their unionization, and labor organizations seem more justified than they have been for generations. 

Not every idea from educated people well-connected in their fields has merit, though – this week’s example is Brown University president Christina Paxson’s April 26^th New York Times “College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall.  Here’s How We Do It.”  All the author offered was noting how many jobs higher education supports and brushing off online instruction, to which other industries have no equivalent recourse, as presenting “financial, practical and psychological barriers.”  I could rewrite this article for other businesses in similar trouble, with at least as much merit and less need for vain hopes such as “regular testing” being able “to prevent the disease from spreading silently through dormitories and classrooms.”  Sorry, Dr. Paxson, but your backyard is no more entitled than others, and your article succeeds best at showing both how noncritical holding September college classes is and how unjustified it would be.

I was surprised not to see something pithier in “There’s Really Only One Way to Reopen the Economy” in the April 26^th New York Times, but Aaron Carroll put his value in the statement, thus far underemphasized, that businesses will be crippled by customers either broke or unwilling to endanger their health.  I estimate that retail places, if allowed to open, would now average about one quarter of their previous sales.  As Carroll again correctly pointed out, we won’t be clearly back on track until there is a widely available vaccine.

Currently, Americans would do best, as Thomas L. Friedman put it also in the Times, to have “a science-based, nonpartisan debate through the hellish ethical (and) economic… trade-offs we have to make.”  We are inside a triangle with the three points personal economic wellbeing, national financial strength, and minimal coronavirus-caused death and illness, and can choose differing amounts of each of these but cannot give top priority to all.  For now, we as a nation are choosing health first and personal economic survival second, a course reasonable if unstudied.  Can we do better?  I do not know, and wish I were more optimistic about our ability to objectively determine and implement the solution.  In the meantime, let’s all cheer for Oxford and other vaccine researchers – until they succeed, we aren’t going much of anywhere.